Remembering the Revolution: Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State

Hardcover | July 18, 2015

Remembering the Irish Revolution chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of Irish independence. While tales of heroism and martyrdom dominated popular accounts of the revolution, a handful of nationalists reflected on the period in moreambivalent terms. For them, the freedoms won in revolution came with great costs: the grievous loss of civilian lives, the brutalisation of Irish society, and the loss of hope for a united and prosperous independent nation. To many nationalists, their views on the revolution were traitorous. Forothers, they were the courageous expression of some uncomfortable truths.This volume explores these struggles over revolutionary memory through the lives of four significant, but under-researched nationalist intellectuals: Eimar O'Duffy, P. S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan. It provides a lively account of their controversial critiques of the Irishrevolution, and an intimate portrait of the friends, enemies, institutions and influences that shaped them.Based on wide-ranging archival research, Remembering the Irish Revolution puts the history of Irish revolutionary memory in a transnational context. It shows the ways in which international debates about war, human progress, and the fragility of Western civilisation were crucial in shaping theunderstandings of the revolution in Ireland. It provides a fresh context for analysis the major writers of the period, such as Sean O'Casey, W. B. Yeats, and Sean O'Faolain, as well as a new outlook on the genesis of the revisionist/nationalist schism that continues to resonate in Irish societytoday.

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Remembering the Irish Revolution chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of Irish independence. While tales of heroism and martyrdom dominated popular accounts of the revolution, a handful of nationalists reflected on the period in moreambivalent terms. For them, the freedoms won in rev...

Frances Flanagan was born in Perth, Western Australia. She obtained bachelor degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Western Australia. After several years as a lawyer, she won a Commonwealth scholarship to read for a DPhil in history at the University of Oxford. She has been a senior
scholar at Hertford College Oxford, a Marsh...

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Table of Contents

Introduction1. Writing the revolution in the Free State2. Eimar O'Duffy and the Waste of 19163. Clean Minded Separatists and the Mob: P.S. O'Hegarty and the ambiguous victory of Sinn Fein4. Shivering Elders and the Exploits of Youth: George Russell's interpretations of the Irish revolution5. Remembering Sion: Desmond Ryan's therapeutic revolutionConclusion: Dissent, disillusionment, and the nationalist idealBibliography